I did this painting titled ‘Bird Vision’ this summer on a large sheet of mid-weight mixed-media paper. I liked the paper’s softness. I tacked it to a piece of plywood resting that on my easel. Then just started. The artist Marc Cohen described it as ‘Neo-Neolithic with a touch of Fauve.’
My (old) Photoshop 5 program became impossible to work with. Some issue with ‘scratch discs.’ So I worked on a 33′ X 5′ roll of Italian paper for a few weeks and developed some writing ideas.
Then I remembered my blog (!) and made this GIF circumventing the ‘scratch-disc’ issue with a simpler arrangement of frames.
In the traboules of the Croix-Rousse
the shuffling silk weaver
the bile of vertigo rising in his throat moves left
in the stairwell only the balls of his feet
on narrow circular steps
(from Lyon, Pierre L’Abbé)
Pierre L’Abbé is a poet and fiction writer, he recently translated Palestine, a novel by Hubert Haddad.
I am working on a new GIF to accompany 5 lines from Lyon by Pierre L’Abbe. The stanza he sent me is so evocative I keep creating new images. So a few more days until I post that.
In the meantime, in a file folder, I found a poem & drawing from July 10, 2013. Close to eight years ago. My dryer was broken, though not the washing machine, so I went to the laundromat with bags of wet clothing. I brought a pen and paper.
The memory of writing a poem in the laundromat impacts me more than re-reading the poem. The poem touches on loss. It was a big deal at the time. As big as the universe. The drawing seems to be about the future. And loss as well.
He examines something, a memory, maybe it belonged to somebody, while his body transforms. He’s growing wings made of fossils or maybe a spiked spinal column has departed. Disappearing. His tears fall channeled into ancient patterns. Or maybe those channels teach him new patterns. Giving him fuel. Leaves, or flames, grow from his eyes. A drawing about vision.
A quickly sketched ink drawing might express many secrets. Something unknown always at work.
I’m glad I was able to post a GIF today. I was working with a large volume of images interpreting five lines from Lyon by Pierre L’Abbe and need more time. I will (knock on wood) assemble that GIF this coming week. In the meantime I offer this ‘slow-moving river of a GIF’ featuring (ostensibly) The Ronettes, although they too were code for something else I suspect, considering when I drew them.
This one has a humorous air to it to go with the pathos of solitude. The ‘face’ of the striding emperor (can you see it?) is the same as the harlequins in the procession with yellow flags. I created a series of pages with that face & design. A shape accidentally happened, I noticed it looked like a face and saved it – it reminded me of my (deceased) brother.
I ‘sign’ these GIFs same as I would a drawing or painting. It’s not egomania that makes me put my name in there.
Although the title in the GIF looks like a book and the GIF looks like a book trailer it’s not. However I created poetic text after the fact.
*
The Light Brigade
As in
Let There Be Light.
Witness
The mechanics of charging light.
Witness traction activate
Clouds of unknowing known
As muscled determination.
The mechanical opposite to A sucker born every minute.
Touch your tongue to the tent of your mouth. Announce
Charge
Pronounce light
As in
Let There Be Light.
*
Notes on the GIF: Intimations of Runic script transform into curvilinear vegetal design indicating a charging beast. It happened visually by itself (so to speak) during the design process.
Finding ‘his’ footing. Gaining traction. The irony of a ‘massive’ beast doing double-duty as charging light. Charging like flashlight beams in a force field? Surely he is not disembodied.
This GIF ponders our pressing situation, universal as it is, and the question of something, anything, out of the blue in reply.
*
The Augustinian Francesco Petrarch travels backwards into the Dark Ages and witnesses President John Kennedy trying to calm Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy senses the unknown. The King of Naples in 1341 appoints Francesco Petrarch Poet Laureate. His sonnets, some say, become the model for lyrical poetry. He writes a book of imaginary letters to Saint Augustine. He writes about this experience. Kennedy considers the known and the unknown.
No martyr is among ye now
Whom you can call your own
So go on your way accordingly
But know you’re not alone
from I Dreamed I Saw Saint Augustine by Bob Dylan
I wasn’t able to find the name of the artist (painter) or photographer. In any case I do not claim copyright for the images used for non-commercial purposes of commentary and refashioning new art works.
The ‘Guard Dog’ above is absurd on an obvious level. He’s clearly a harmless creature not a guard dog. Yet he is the World’s Greatest Guard Dog. Absurd. Or maybe the treasure he is guarding only needs a tiny woof and it will hide itself. I don’t know – maybe. I like to think the DADA artists might have smiled upon this little guy expected to be, or pretended to be, fierce. I’ve read they enjoyed the anarchic chaos of Keystone Cops movies and, of course, the genius of Charlie Chaplin. John Heartfield and the DADA artists created not only wildly inventive and incisive commentaries on war – war profiteering – and class privilege but did so with scathing absurdist humour. Heartfield lived in a dangerous time. His artistic satire put him in great danger.
